poems Archives - Fritz Ascher Society

Jun 28, 2024

“My verses are like dynamite”
Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret
Presentation by Aubrey Pomerance, Berlin (Germany)

Rachel Stern2024-07-10T16:07:15-04:00June 28th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on “My verses are like dynamite”
Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret
Presentation by Aubrey Pomerance, Berlin (Germany)

Under threat from Nazi antisemitism, the young Jewish lawyer Curt Bloch (1908–1975) fled Dortmund for the Netherlands in 1933. He went into hiding there in 1942 and emigrated to the United States after the war. In his hiding place, from August 1943 to April 1945 Bloch produced a magazine with the telling title Het Onderwater Cabaret – “The Underwater Cabaret.” Image above: Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family Week by week, Curt Bloch created small-format booklets with artfully designed covers, containing a total of 483 handwritten poems in German and [...]

Feb 26, 2021

2020 – Ori Z Soltes (Ed.)
Immortality, Memory, Creativity, and Survival:
The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana,
Ronnie Cahana and Kitra Cahana

Rachel Stern2021-02-26T06:28:48-05:00February 26th, 2021|Selected Publications|Comments Off on 2020 – Ori Z Soltes (Ed.)
Immortality, Memory, Creativity, and Survival:
The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana,
Ronnie Cahana and Kitra Cahana

Alice Lok Cahana (1929 - 2017) was a teenager from Sarvar, Hungary who survived four different camps in the last year of the war, losing every member of her extended family, except for her father and including her beloved older sister, Edith—who survived, only to perish from illness immediately after liberation: she entered a hospital, and Alice never saw her again. Alice swore an oath to herself while in the camps that, if she survived, she would become an arOst and draw rainbows out of the ashes of her experience. She not only became an artist, she produced three offspring, and among them her oldest son, Ronnie, intensely responsive to his mother’s history, became a poet. Ronnie’s oldest daughter, Kitra, [...]

Feb 24, 2021

2020 – Rachel Stern (Ed.)
Fritz Ascher. Poesiealbum 357

Rachel Stern2021-02-24T05:40:28-05:00February 24th, 2021|Selected Publications|Comments Off on 2020 – Rachel Stern (Ed.)
Fritz Ascher. Poesiealbum 357

Ascher composed, wrote, drew and painted: Between 1942 and 45 - three long years - he hid from the persecution of the fascists in the basement of a bombed-out house in Berlin-Grunewald. Immobility, loneliness and hunger as well as the fear of betrayal and discovery, torture and death did not leave him during this time. In this situation he found poignant words for his “unpainted pictures”. He conveys both the intensity of his thought processes and his sensitivity for - and his use of - words as well as their nuances and sound patterns. Above all, he demonstrates the indomitable spirit of the artist Fritz Ascher, which no circumstance, regardless of the medium, can prevent from creating with vehement and [...]

Feb 24, 2021

2020 – Rachel Stern and Julia Diekmann (Ed.)
Der Vereinsamte. Clowns in der Kunst
Fritz Aschers (1893-1970)

Rachel Stern2021-02-24T04:27:46-05:00February 24th, 2021|Selected Publications|Comments Off on 2020 – Rachel Stern and Julia Diekmann (Ed.)
Der Vereinsamte. Clowns in der Kunst
Fritz Aschers (1893-1970)

For Fritz Ascher, the ambivalence of the clown as an outsider in society was a central motive. Fritz Ascher found his Bajazzo motif during the First World War, a time of political, societal and social upheaval. In her introduction to this catalog, Rachel Stern traces Ascher's world as well as his artistic development and illuminates the further life of the persecuted and ostracized artist through the horrors of the Nazi regime. In the catalog essays, the authors Jutta Götzmann and Ori Z. Soltes highlight Fritz Ascher's Bajazzo works in a focused way. In addition to Ascher's Bajazzo works, the catalog also includes depictions of landscapes created after 1945, which clearly show the personal and artistic break through experiencing persecution, ostracism by [...]

Sep 9, 2020

“Narr der ich bleib…”
Poems and Artwork by Fritz Ascher
Preview of “Poesiealbum” by Märkischer Verlag

Rachel Stern2020-10-28T14:30:51-04:00September 9th, 2020|Comments Off on “Narr der ich bleib…”
Poems and Artwork by Fritz Ascher
Preview of “Poesiealbum” by Märkischer Verlag

Reading of Poems by Stephan Weigelin and Reflexion on Artwork by Julia Diekmann The event previews a "Poesiealbum" of Fritz Ascher’s poems, which will be published in December 2020 by Märkischer Verlag Wilhelmshorst, in the series “Ostracized Poets – Burned Books.” "Fritz Ascher's poetic voice rises at a time when his artistic voice is forced to fall silent. Fear of death, hunger and immobility, isolation and loneliness are his daily reality. In this situation he writes poems in which he shares his thoughts and innermost feelings and creates unpainted pictures. Ascher's poems are authentic, tender and powerful, and live from the expressive, creative use of language." Rachel Stern "... we can now safely include him in our canon of [...]

Dec 10, 2019

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #29, December 2019

Rachel Stern2019-12-10T06:06:07-05:00December 10th, 2019|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #29, December 2019

Dear Friends, Today I have exciting news: on November 13, the Fritz Ascher Stiftung (Fritz Ascher Foundation) was founded at Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin (City Museum Berlin) (link). The foundation's board of trustees consists of Paul Spies, director of Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Eckhart Gillen, art historian and curator, and Rachel Stern, director of the Fritz Ascher Society. from left: Paul Spies, Peter-Stephan Prause, Eva Bünte, Rachel Stern, Martina Weinland, Peter Bünte Ephraim Palais, Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Berlin (Germany) The foundation was initiated by private collectors of the artistic work of Fritz Ascher, to give his work a publicly accessible home and to present it in the context of his artistic contemporaries in [...]

Sep 23, 2019

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #28, September 2019

Rachel Stern2019-09-23T17:36:19-04:00September 23rd, 2019|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #28, September 2019

Dear Friends, Fall is finally upon us. Fritz Ascher’s “Landscape with a Cloudy Sky” from c. 1960 captures the rich colors and dramatic light of late afternoon, brought forth with spontaneous, dynamic brushstrokes that characterize the artist’s late work. Fritz Ascher, Landscape with a Cloudy Sky, 1960s. Oil on canvas, 39.4 x 37.4 in. While he was hiding from the Nazis 1942-1945, the artist wrote: I have spent the summer re-reading the poems I have access to, marveling at their rich verbal imagery and thinking about a publication of this powerful manifestation of the artist’s creativity, which translates so easily into disciplines other than the visual [...]

Jun 7, 2019

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #27, June 2019

Rachel Stern2019-06-07T08:01:34-04:00June 7th, 2019|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #27, June 2019

Dear Friends, I hope you all were able to see “Fritz Ascher, Expressionist” at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery that closed on April 6. Thanks to director Lynn Gumpert and her fabulous team, the exhibition looked great and was complemented by an engaging program. The show was well received, both by visitors and critics. In the meantime, most reviews are translated into German here. If you were not able to visit in person, you can see photos on our website here. The exhibition was part of Wunderbar Together: The Year of German-American Friendship 2018/19, an initiative of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the Goethe-Institut, with the support of the Federation of German Industries (BDI). “Fritz Ascher, Expressionist” at Grey [...]

Feb 12, 2019

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #25, February 2019

Rachel Stern2019-02-12T06:24:36-05:00February 12th, 2019|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #25, February 2019

Dear Friends, What was it like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany? Come join the discussion tomorrow, February 12, at 6:30 pm, when I speak with Marion Kaplan, Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History, NYU, about those who went underground, including Fritz Ascher, and endured the terrors of nightly bombings, hunger and cold, and the even greater fear of being discovered by the Nazis. At King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South. This program accompanies the exhibition “Fritz Ascher, Expressionist” at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University here in New York - please check out the other stimulating programs here. And do not forget to see the exhibition, which is on view [...]

Dec 27, 2018

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #24, December 2018

Rachel Stern2019-01-14T00:10:25-05:00December 27th, 2018|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter #24, December 2018

Dear Friends, I am filled with gratitude for your interest and support that enabled us this year to initiate and organize five exhibitions, numerous lectures and exhibition tours, two world premiere concerts featuring musical interpretations of Fritz Ascher’s poems by Potsdam composer Gisbert Näther, as well as the emotional ceremony placing a stumbling block in front of Niklasstraße 21/23 in Berlin-Zehlendorf memorizing Fritz Ascher at the location of his parental home. Thank you to everyone who made these events possible! Thank you to Wolfgang Gustavus, whose unexpected death deeply saddens us, for donating works by Fritz Ascher to the Potsdam Museum and Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf Berlin. As 2018 is winding down, I hope you are enjoying some peace and fun [...]